Tamale Pie: Day Two
Can I go an entire week just posting about Tamale Pie? Â SHOULD I post about Tamale Pie for an entire week? Â Probably not, but I’m going to try!
Today’s example of Tamale Pie comes from Sunset’s Kitchen Cabinet Recipes, vol. 3 from 1944. Â And it’s not just any old Tamale Pie recipe, it’s a vegetarian version, complete with an illustrated guide! Â Although I have to say that my commenter, Dushenka, is right — I would definitely add beans to the mix as well!
Tamale Pie: Day One
This week, A Bit of Butter is dedicated to the Tamale Pie! Â Below, I’ve included some standard versions of Tamale Pie from vintage cook books and recipe cards. Â In searching for recipes, I kept a pretty strict definition for what Tamale Pie should include: mainly, a cornmeal crust. Â There are other taco casseroles that call themselves Tamale Pie (and I’ll probably post a few of these later in the week), but for now, here are a few standard recipes for this long-lived casserole.
I have to hand it to Tamale Pie, it’s been around an awfully long time, and aimed to give home-cooks a convenient method for making tamales without numerous steps.  The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink lists the Capitol Cookbook from 1899 as the first to include a recipe for Tamale Pie, but this one has a wheat-flour crust instead of the ubiquitous corn meal that most Tamale Pies use.  The earliest version that uses cornmeal, is a recipe from the Los Angeles Times Cook Book, No. 2, published in 1905, which features “old-time California, Spanish and Mexican dishes”.  In the American Century Cookbook, Jean Anderson writes that Tamale Pie gained popularity during World War I as a vegetarian main dish (148).  But it wasn’t until the second World War when recipes for Tamale Pie exploded into a full-blown trend.
Like the recipe found in the L.A. Times, Sunset’s Kitchen Cabinet Recipes, vol. 3 (pictured above), published in 1944, uses both ground pork and beef for protein, which gives the dish a more complex flavor profile. Â It also takes the recipe farther away from the standard tamale by adding corn kernels, tomato, and other ingredients.
Reimagining Classic Casseroles
It was super-cold in Chez Butter last night.  We’re currently in the midst of a remodel (the contractors just finished work on our kitchen and have moved on to the bathrooms) so I turn off the heat during the daytime since the contractors inevitably leave windows and doors open as they work.  Our cold house, combined with Seattle’s drizzly spring mean that I am in the mood for some comfort food and comfort reading, so I grabbed my new issue of Bon Appétit and snuggled under the comforter.
Imagine my surprise when I turned to an articled titled One-Dish Dinners: A fresh direction for old school casseroles!  Not only did the magazine take on the humble Tuna-Noodle Casserole, they even had a recipe for Tamale Pie.  I tend to give the stink eye to ‘updated’ versions of classics (hence the scare-quotes), but I am always up for trying recipes that don’t include cans of Cream of ________ Soup.
Growing up, my mom didn’t make many casseroles.  (As many of you know, she’s quite the home chef and was always experimenting with new recipes — ask her about Moroccan Chicken, sometime!)  I remember having Chicken Divan and a casserole that was inexplicably called Martha Washington (I have no idea why it’s called that?), but I don’t recall having some of the more standard one-dish meals.
So this weekend, I’m going to search through my stash of recipe cards and vintage cookbooks for a Tamale Pie recipe that does not contain cans of mysterious concentrated soups! Â Making Tamale Pie sounds perfect this week, especially since Seattle’s mini-spring has left us and we’re back to our drizzly, grey days — that, and the contractors have left my house chilled to the bone, yet again!
Mrs. Boland’s Walnut Brown Bread
For our inaugural post, I’m choosing a recipe from my husband’s grandmother, who hails from Minnesota.  I found this one amongst a stack of 3×5 cards with recipes for various cookies, desserts, and breads that his mother saved from the trash when they were cleaning out his grandmother’s house a few years back.  Kevin’s grandmother is a practical woman who grew up in South Dakota and spent most of her adult life in Minnesota.  Judging by the title, the recipe was given to her by a Mrs. Boland.
